The Cardinal’s Column

The October 2012 Synod on the New Evangelization

Cardinal's Appointments

Rector

Rev. Theodore Ploplis to rector
of the National Shrine of St. Francis Xavier
Cabrini effective Sept. 1, while retaining
his duties as coordinator of spiritual services
at St. Joseph Hospital.

Every three or four years, bishops
from around the world gather with
the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, to
deliberate about a subject of importance
to the universal church. The last ordinary
Roman Synod of Bishops considered the
Word of God in the life and mission of
the church. I was a member of that
synod, and we began several initiatives
to renew and deepen our understanding
of Holy Scripture in the archdiocese
based on the synod’s deliberations. In the
nature of things, these initiatives gather
steam slowly, but some elements of the
strategic pastoral plan relate to the concerns
of the 2008 synod.

At that synod I was one of 10 bishops
from around the world elected to serve
on the council of the synod, responsible
for follow up to the 2008 synod and for
preparing this October’s meeting. I was
grateful to be elected a member of the
2012 synod, and I deeply regret not
being able to attend, because I cannot interrupt
the chemotherapy treatments
begun last month. The other delegates
from the U.S. bishops’ conference have
promised to keep me posted, and I have
promised to keep them in my prayers. I
urge everyone here to pray for the synod,
and I express again my gratitude for the
many prayers being offered for the
restoration of my health. They are life
giving.

The synod will discuss the new evangelization.
(Read an interview with Sister
Sara Butler who will attend the synod
as an expert, Page 12.) Why that topic
and what does it mean? The mission of
the church, her purpose, is to introduce
the world to its savior in every generation
until he returns to judge the living
and the dead. Introducing people to
Christ is called, in biblical terms, evangelizing.
Preaching the Gospel means
telling people who Christ is, because he
is personally God’s message, God’s
Word for the world’s salvation. It is, first
of all, the activity of the Holy Spirit and
not just a human endeavor. Nevertheless,
people of faith are called to be instruments
of the Holy Spirit’s action in converting
the world to Christ.

When the Second Vatican Council was
called 50 years ago to rework the relationship
between the church and the
world redeemed by Christ, the great
challenge to conversion of life was the
disunity of the human family. The world
was at war with itself and almost came to
the brink of nuclear destruction over the
Cuban missile crisis. Pope John XXIII
called the council so that the church
could act, through her internal unity, as a
source of solidarity for the entire human
family. The means to achieve this greater
unity was, and remains, dialogue: proposing
the faith in a mutually respectful
conversation, without imposing.

Fifty years later, the world is more
united, as the current worldwide economic
crisis bears witness. We have developed
an ecological consciousness and
are used to global cultural phenomena
and communications that transcend national
barriers. The challenge to the
church’s mission today is that this more
united world will turn in on itself, claiming
a false autonomy from God, confusing
freedom with control. Dialogue is
possible, until people are invited to dialogue
with God. Then the conversation
shuts down.

Refusal to permit public dialogue with
God marks a secularized society. God is
banned from public life, along with the
church that Christ founded. Entire societies
once formed in conversation with
the faith are now organized in such a
way that God is deliberately forgotten or
simply overlooked in arranging the
course of human events.

The new evangelization is a response
to this challenge of secularization. How
does the church introduce the world to
its savior when much of the world would
prefer to forget him and is resentful of
any attempt on the part of the church to
remind them that they are creatures of
God and not self-made men and women?
That is, in a general way, the topic of this
October’s meeting in Rome. There is
good reason, as you can well understand,
to pray that the meeting will make a difference
in our lives as believers today.

Any response to the challenge of the
new evangelization will have to be double
faceted. Evangelization happens
when people talk, especially about what
is most important in their lives. One
challenge is to find a way of talking and
a way of listening that will open up conversations
to the meaning of life and to
the action of God in our lives. These
conversations take place in homes, in
schools and colleges, around water coolers,
at birthday parties, in buses and taxi
cabs, in the media, on Facebook and
other means of social communications.
Catholics have to be present to these
conversations and prepared to “give reasons
for the faith that is in us,” as St.
Peter admonishes in his first epistle.

But the Gospel is lived even before it is
spoken or proclaimed. The church, the
community of faith that speaks in
Christ’s name, is part of the Gospel itself.
The second challenge is to create,
with God’s grace, communities of love
and joy that speak to the world of Gospel
transformation. In the church, people can
experience the joy of being definitively
loved and the call to be definitively loving.
They can discover the beauty of the
world itself in the light of faith. This joy
comes from God and is the only joy that
can satisfy the hunger of the human
heart.

This second challenge is more difficult
today because of internal strife in the
church and because many conversations,
on late night talk shows, in newspaper
columns, in governmental actions, teach
contempt for the Catholic Church. This
is a phenomenon not present here 50
years ago at the time of the Second Vatican
Council. Hence, the need for a synod
today on the new evangelization and its
challenges. Keep it in your prayers. You
are in mine.